News

Identities on parade

A HOME FROM HOME From Immigrant Boy to English Man by George Alagiah Little, Brown £17.99 pp278

The handsome features and sober patrician voice of George Alagiah are as familiar as wallpaper. He is the presenter of BBC1’s Six O’Clock News, and he would be the first to admit that he epitomises a certain quintessential Britishness — smartly suited, exuding quiet authority, reassuringly in charge.

Like millions of other Brits, however, he was not always British. As an immigrant who has had to manufacture his own Britishness, Alagiah is in an ideal position to join the raging debate about multiculturalism. Is it a good thing to allow immigrants to cling to their own national identities and customs, or “has institutionalised tolerance for diversity led to institutionalised indifference to separation?” Is it, in fact, only a recipe for creating alienation and resentment? The starting-point for A Home from Home was the horror